Issues like non-inclusion, pay inequities, lack of representation, marginalization, and problematic hiring practices have largely remained unaddressed in the tech industry.

We explored these concepts with Jason Wong, who has made waves as an engineer and diversity and inclusion consultant. His extensive experience of over nineteen years in the industry boasts roles with Yahoo! Sports and Etsy, among others.

We are very excited about the upcoming conference and put together an easy-to-follow guide to highlight the most significant events and speakers for HR professionals.

We hope that this guide will serve as a tool to help you navigate SAAS NORTH and leave you with more time to enjoy the Conference! It is also mobile-friendly so you can follow along with our Guide during Conference days.

We sat down with Traci Cheng, Head of People and Operations at the Toronto-based Zoom.ai, to learn more about their diversity, inclusion and belonging (DIBs) initiatives. We wanted to share why they decided to introduce Crescendo to the team.

We are thrilled to announce that we have teamed up with SAAS-E[quality] to send one person to the conference and be a part of the #solveathon. SAAS-E[quality] is a one-day pop-up unconference happening in Toronto on December 3rd, 2018. The conference is designed to advance equality in the SAAS ecosystem.

We are excited to announce that we have teamed up with SAAS NORTH to connect one person from an underrepresented community in the tech industry to this amazing conference! You can learn more about the initiative in this article.

Announced in March, Techstars and Real Ventures partnered to launch the AI-specific program in the city, which boasts a strong AI ecosystem, including companies like Element AI and a growing presence of labs from Facebook, Google, and Samsung. The ten selected companies will spend three months in the program, before ending with a Demo Day on December 5.

The Next 36 Outstanding Venture Award winner, Crescendo, has developed a tool that sends employees personalized diversity and inclusion training through Slack and similar workplace communication platforms in order to identify and resolve bias in the workplace. Co-founder Daniel D’Souzaexplained that Crescendo already has nine early adopters in the pipeline for paid pilots and has raised $240,000 in the last nine weeks.

Venture Day celebrates the end of two NEXT Canada programs including Next 36, which supports young founders of early-stage businesses; and Next Founders, which focuses on founder development for existing startups with significant traction. This year, Next 36 startup Crescendo and Next Founders startup Nomz received the Outstanding Venture prize for their respective programs.

For 2018’s event, Startupfest has teamed up with some incredible partners, to roll out our inclusion initiative — a program dedicated to connecting entrepreneurs from diverse communities to equal opportunities.